Ashour Hossam M, Elkhatib Walid F, Rahman Md Masudur, Elshabrawy Hatem A
Department of Biological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, University of South Florida St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA.
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University, Cairo 11562, Egypt.
Pathogens. 2020 Mar 4;9(3):186. doi: 10.3390/pathogens9030186.
Coronaviruses (CoVs) are RNA viruses that have become a major public health concern since the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-CoV (SARS-CoV) outbreak in 2002. The continuous evolution of coronaviruses was further highlighted with the emergence of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-CoV (MERS-CoV) outbreak in 2012. Currently, the world is concerned about the 2019 novel CoV (SARS-CoV-2) that was initially identified in the city of Wuhan, China in December 2019. Patients presented with severe viral pneumonia and respiratory illness. The number of cases has been mounting since then. As of late February 2020, tens of thousands of cases and several thousand deaths have been reported in China alone, in addition to thousands of cases in other countries. Although the fatality rate of SARS-CoV-2 is currently lower than SARS-CoV, the virus seems to be highly contagious based on the number of infected cases to date. In this review, we discuss structure, genome organization, entry of CoVs into target cells, and provide insights into past and present outbreaks. The future of human CoV outbreaks will not only depend on how the viruses will evolve, but will also depend on how we develop efficient prevention and treatment strategies to deal with this continuous threat.
冠状病毒（CoVs）是RNA病毒，自2002年严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒（SARS-CoV）爆发以来，已成为主要的公共卫生问题。2012年中东呼吸综合征冠状病毒（MERS-CoV）爆发的出现，进一步凸显了冠状病毒的持续进化。目前，全世界都在关注2019新型冠状病毒（SARS-CoV-2），该病毒于2019年12月在中国武汉市首次被发现。患者表现出严重的病毒性肺炎和呼吸道疾病。从那时起，病例数量一直在增加。截至2020年2月下旬，仅中国就报告了数万例病例和数千例死亡，此外其他国家也有数千例病例。尽管目前SARS-CoV-2的病死率低于SARS-CoV，但从迄今为止的感染病例数量来看，该病毒似乎具有高度传染性。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了冠状病毒的结构、基因组组织、进入靶细胞的方式，并对过去和现在的疫情爆发提供见解。人类冠状病毒疫情的未来不仅取决于病毒将如何进化，还将取决于我们如何制定有效的预防和治疗策略来应对这一持续的威胁。
